Something for Richa.

I haven't been writing for a while, but my dear friend and die-hard blog fan Richa's Facebook comments made me feel like picking up my pen again (actually it was a pencil). I'd had a difficult couple of days, stressed out and unable to sleep. The thought of having to wake up at six to take Dad to hospital for his cataract operation was not a jolly one. The resentment of always being the one who gets roped in for these things, didn't help. I was tired and grumpy, doing my best to smile my way through and be pleasant, but I wasn't a very happy person today. Finally, this evening, I got away and took some time for myself, and that's when this bit of writing happened. It's not exactly a poem, but I think it's poetic. Thanks Richa, for pushing me to write!

Crescent

The day dawned ugly.
Anger, fear, grief, rage
dragged me through.
Bruised by irritation and guilt,
I crept away to be alone,
not hoping for comfort or understanding,
just silence, stillness and some semblance
of what it is not to exist.
But then I happened to glance up,
and found the moon was smiling down at me.

for those who've a fondness

for those who've a fondness for bums

might i recommend using condoms

though it feels like a glove

when its not pure love

it will catch all the germs when you comes.

poe, 2003 no visitors please

No Visitors Please, I'm Sick

If you come here with a cough

please be nice and bugger off.

If by chance you have the flu

Turn around (there's the door) you know what to do

You may be coughing into your hands

but wherever you touch a little germ lands

have you come with a throat that's sore

stay on that side of the door

3 limericks

found .. in a diary of course .. from around feb 2006

One of these days, not later but sooner

I'm going to build me a ship that is lunar

Then I'll sail far away

for an hour or a day

Till I reach the moon's shores on my magical schooner.

There once was a strapping young farmer

He fancied himself quite a charmer

But his dowry demands

Won him not many hands

Now he wanders his fields wearing armour.

I have heard that out there on the prairie

They will kill you if you are a fairy

But on Sunday they rest

Go to church in their best

Holy bloodstains! Now isn't that scary?

"Depression ..

I don't think they understand depression. I don't think they know what it means.

It's the sun shining brightly.

It's a garden filled with flowers.

It's being loved.

It's being alive.

It's fed and clothed and warm and cool and safe,

not sick, not broke, not widowed.

Depression is a grief that grows in this beautiful place.

It has no reason (that I know of).

It just is.

Don't tell me to t hink it away,

to look at the bright side,

to compare myself with the less fortunate.

I'm not a fool.

I'm not an idiot.

I'm not a shallow, self-centred pig.

Though I can be all these things

at one time or another.

What I am is depressed.

DEPRESSED.

It's a word you use too lightly.

"I'm so depressed, my new shoes got wet."

You're disappointed.

"So depressing, none of the chapters I studied came in the exam."

So frustrating. Or so unfair.

"I'm depressed"

sometimes means

I'm bored.

I'm tired.

I'm lonely.

I'm fed up.

I'm sad.

I'm mourning.

It's a word you use too lightly.

It's the heaviest word I know.

15 8 2003

"What is success ...

I'm not sure this is poetry, it's just something I wrote in a diary (yes, yes, this is yet another regurgitated pearl from the diaries I'm destroying). But it's poetic and nice and I feel like sharing:

What is success for me?
To be useful, fruitful, functional, famous.
To have peace of mind.

To be a published writer
and to have Askios flourish
and to have my art work
recognised and wanted.
To die without regrets?
To find my soul mate.
To heal my fragmented mind as is best and live well with it.

It'll feel bubbly, energetic,
worth waking up for.

I'll be busily content, my days full, and oh yes I'll be richer.

To be admired.
To have my talents not lie stagnant.
To be recognised for the way
I have used them.
To create
To preserve my ideas
To communicate them in wonderful ways.

To make a difference in the world.
To leave it a better place.
To free myself of torment.
To understand myself.
To love myself.

I want to make a mark.
A good mark that would change this world for the better.
To be remembered?
Not necessarily.
As long as I know I didn't just walk through.
I need to know that I mattered.
That the world is a better place because of me.

(from my diary 2003 July 26 Saturday, 5.20 pm)

What I have learnt from reading this now, is that I need to truly believe that the world ALREADY is a better place because of me.

19 may 2004 "a little girl watches

a little girl watches from the parapet every morning.

dappled sunlight

and canoe-shaped pods ..

where's the snake?

Sunrays through

the leaves - and

a breeze - is that

a snake moving through

the mulch?

No ... you see the snake

only when it wants you to.

20 6 03, 4.25 pm

The beauty of being me
is that its always so interesting
I'm always so different
changing turning
like a kaleidoscope
Fragmented like a kaleidoscope.

Man-made.
The fragments are pieces
broken apart by man
bits from here and there
An undone button
broken in half.

Re arranged.
Twisted. Shaken. Turned
around and around
and around
Falling always falling
these fragments
But they fall so beautifully.
That is the beauty
of
being
ME.

March 2003

And so she went on a journey,

a long journey far away from Him

And He went His way,

leaving her to do what she willed

Knowing it was not over.

And she lived and she loved

though she did not really know how to do either.

She wandered and sang

and pretended to search

and she drank to cover

the wounds and the emptiness

And she sent a part of her to sleep,

to a dull drugged sleep.

But today she awoke.

Soon she will stretch

and lift her feet

and go in search of Him

And He will be there.

Out of the shadows that she created,

He may step forth

And she will see

that He is here,

That He has always been here.

And like a bride

she will lower her eyes and smile

and feel a flutter within

her heart

And accept Him

and ask Him to accept her.

from my diary .. but I think i should end it with he has always been here. the bride bit is corny.

Dear Me .. there once was a girl

good heavens. a pronographic limerick. with feminist undertones against sexual harassment.

april 30 2002 from diary

There once was a girl from the city
Who had an enormous left titty
She would hide it at first
But forth it would burst
that poor lopsided girl from the city.

one day she set forth from the city
in search of some kindness and pity
but the men with lips pursed
salivating with thirst
only wanted to play with her titty

Dear Me .. there once was a girl

good heavens. a pronographic limerick. with feminist undertones against sexual harassment.

april 30 2002 from diary

There once was a girl from the city

Who had an enormous left titty

She would hide it at first

But forth it would burst

that poor lopsided girl from the city.

one day she set forth from the city

in search of some kindness and pity

but the men with lips pursed

salivating with thirst

only wanted to play with her titty

july 2002

The silent screams

continue

but now they're not for

a drug

for the family's well

kept secret,

swept tidily under the rug.

Snug as a bug.

Squashed.

Squashed down to size.

Between the thighs.

That'll teach you.

That'll show you

be a good girl

Stupid

be a good girl now

be bad grown up.

I hate it, I hate it all

but there's too much to

do I'm so low but

I'm strong and I'll make it.

I'm tired to write.

"You turned us ..

another poem found in a diary from April 9th 2001, 1.30 .a,m

You turned us into liars.

You turned us into sluts.

You made us fat,

You made us thin,

You got us hooked on heroin.

Did we really mean so little

or did you just not know

that by playing blind or silent

your reply to our cry

for help was a "No"?

my parents had just left after confronting the abuser .. i was getting really into my therapy and boy when i think about it now what an intense time .. so much anger and pain and letting emotions in. this poem is to parents, I think, parents in general .. or perhaps to adults in general .. who by their inaction, help the abusers.

nov 6th 2001

from my diary

I bore the curse of the abuse

and now I am blest.

"Do you see ..

Dear me .. From my diary, Oct 12, 2001. The American attack on Afghanistan had just begun. Tony Blair had just realised that 80% of their heroin came from Afghanistan (odd how this realisation came at the same time they needed to attack).

Do you see, Big Brother,

do you see what you have unleashed?

Why blame Eve?

Why Pandora?

It is man, not woman,

who takes us to our doom.

The civilised, developed man

in his three piece suit

will make the earth our tomb

Somewhere in a little room

cow dung on the floor

perhaps there is a woman

who can help this world be more.

Once Upon Looking

Once upon looking in my mirror, I saw someone else. I was combing back my hair before getting into bed .. my face reminded me of my uncle (one of my abusers) and I thought yuk, and I thought it's the glasses, that's why I prefer the thick black ones my eyes don't look like his. And I remembered thick glasses when I was 12 and then I took the glasses off .. and my face started changing -- it was old, all the shadows sunken in. I thought it was the light so I lifted my face into the light from the window and I didn't want to look again but I had to .. it looked tough -- and then it looked masculine with long sideburns (but I combed my hair back .. ?) and the faces were ugly -- and then the face stretched and just smudged into grey nothing above my neck and the print on my nightie's neckline.

from a diary entry I had made on:

Tues night, 4 Sept, 1.15 a.m. Wed actually.

"The Lebanese Trio ..

It turns out that I had such fun writing the poem about my meal, that immediately after, I tried writing another. When I turned the page of my diary, I found this other not-so-little nonsense poem, based on the Lebanese band who first sat down at the table next to mine, and disturbed me with their coughing and proximity for a while, till they moved away to perform.

The Lebanese Trio's Cigarette Break

I do not understand

a single word they say

But they are whispering, I think,

about something risque.

One has a puff like Elvis,

one's got too much gel.

One has no hair to mess with.

I think that's just as well.

I think I have taken their table.

I think they resent this fact.

They think my smiles as I write this,

suggest my mind has cracked.

And now that they have gone away

you'd think I would feel free

But they drive me suicidal

with their dirge of misery!

Perhaps it is a love song

Or a victory theme, who can say?

For though the words change

the tune remains

the same from day to day.

Could it be that's all they know to play?

Could it be time for me to go away?

The answer to these just wouldn't rhyme

so let me end by saying its not nay.

- also written on 16-8-01

"Leave me...

I have just finished reading a book called Smack, by Melvin Burgess. Twenty years ago, I was at the height - or to be more accurate, the depth - of my heroin addiction. Reading this book was like listening to echoes, and what struck me the most was that there was not much difference between the British teenagers of those pages and the Bangalore teenagers of my past. Different slang, different lifestyles maybe, but the essence and the philosophy by which we lived and breathed: no difference. We thought we were unique. We thought our situation, our emotions, our attitudes .. we thought we were something special. It must have meant a lot to have that, I think now, because I don't think we had very much else. Today, finding this out: that none of what we did thought or felt was unique, brings up some kind of twinge, something akin to pity for that girl of twenty years ago. Back then, it probably wouldn't have mattered. That's what smack did. It made nothing else matter very much.

Today I look at this old poem of mine and suddenly it's not just mine any more. Dear me, what an odd feeling that is.

Leave me alone.
Let me live my life my way.
Let me die.

The choice is mine
and I reject life.
All I want is brief song
and silence.

Cry if you must
but forget me.
I don't want to be a memory.
I don't want a tombstone.

(written on Sept 28, 1985, at 11.44 p.m.)

"Hunting for sanity ...

I guess I had realised at this point that I needed it not to get high, but just to stay sane. This poem makes me very very sad every time I read it. Dear, dear little me ..

Hunting for sanity,
searching empty vials, searching my soul
for answers I know don't exist.
When there's nothing left to look for,
where am I to go?

There's a castle in my mind
but the walls are wearing thin
so anyone can look in.
The rooms are empty, and echo.
There's incense in the air.
Everywhere.
A bittersweet aroma that I've grown to love.

There's someone wandering through these halls.
Can you hear her frightened calls?
She's lost, she wants to get things straight.
She knows the way out, she has the key.
Strange .. she looks a lot like me.
She only has to turn around
to get her feet back on the ground
but she's hunting for some sanity
scraping empty vials
though there's nothing left inside them
and her wishes won't come true.

So if you look me in the eye
try not to look behind my eyes.
You'll see grey stone and stormy skies
and pain I must keep hidden.

Should I lock the door and drop the key,
alone in my castle, just smack and me?

And the seaspray'll eat the wood away
and the lightning break the stone
till I'm out in the open and vulnerable
and feeling so very alone.
But I'll know where the walls once stood
and I'll trace my way along.

Out beyond the beach,
beyond the waves,
behind the sun
whatever I'm looking for is waiting for me.
If you come there you will see
footprints in the sand
leading to the sea
but you won't find me.

(written on Sept 26, 1985 at 11:12 a.m.

"Smiles are cheap ...

Dear me! Suicidal undertones, but I still kind of like this one.

Smiles are cheap,
and easy to fake.
Smiles hide so much heartache.
And all I need to hide the lies
Is a quickly woven veil thrown over my eyes.
It’s not deceit when my laughter
Pushes my conflict to the back of their minds.
My smile keeps them smiling,
And doesn’t let them in
On the fact that my plastic laughter
Is nothing but a death-wish grin.

(written on Sept 2, 1985 at 9:26 a.m.)